Will Saudi investment be banned? Should it be?

The most startling image in the news this week has to be that of Jamal Khashoggi’s son Salah shaking the hand of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on Tuesday three weeks after his father’s brutal murder. What must he have been thinking as he met the man allegedly ...

What was MBS thinking? Surely not that an awkwardly stage-managed handshake would somehow convey the message to the world that he was not implicated and all was well.

The ice-cold expression on Khashoggi’s face said otherwise and after some initial equivocation from Donald Trump, the global community is clearly not buying it either. Trump revoked the US visas of 21 identified suspects after slamming the Saudis’ attempted cover-up as “the worst in the history of cover-ups” and Turkey’s President Erdoğan said the journalist was the victim of a premeditated and “savage” murder as he called for the suspects to be tried in Istanbul and promised to punish “all those who played a role in the murder”. Meanwhile, numerous countries, including the UK, boycotted the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference.

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